


Silently, My Love

by cirque



Category: Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-27
Updated: 2012-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-31 20:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/pseuds/cirque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander returns from campaign, and finds a letter inviting him to a childhood hide-out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silently, My Love

_Come with me, my love_

_To the sea, the sea of love_

_I want to tell you_

_How much I love you._

 

Dappled fruit groves and an edge of risk to the air, tight and snickering against the exposed barks. A lowly sun hangs upon the dusk sky, alone and waiting, teasing the browning ground with the last few, weakling rays. A cloud or two, sparsely decorating the backdrop, harbouring grey and welcome shades of rain. The sound of birds, tweeting back and forth, and a far-off water brook telling its tale of serenity; a suggestion of a whisper, hung low beneath the canopy of leaves, as the wide-eyed watcher waits. He waits, he breathes; his worries become the undisturbed peace of the grove as he sits in silence, alone.

 

His golden hair slips unwatched across his face, reflecting back the light of a thousand eyes in the dusk sun. His skin is the bronzed hue of royal adoration, pinked at the palms as he clutches a piece of paper tight. The bluest eyes, embracing each word as the paper spills it forth, reading and re-reading, with zeal upon his sweated face. The vaingloriousness of majesty and opulence that shines in his wanton face is cooled and calmed by silence. He is alone, no voices prickle at his ears, no questions or needing lies, no warm glow of adoration to fill his heart with obligation.

 

He smiles a lonesome smile and, devoid of motive and sufferance and obedience, it is a smile of peace.

 

His fingers crease the edges of the paper, creating tears in the sides to replace the tears he would cry. Whitened, thin fingers that flick back the annoying slick of hair and tremble with something more than anticipation as he waits in complete silence.

 

At his feet lies a bowl of grapes, purple, rounded, and a cup of spiced wine, with the tang of sweetness that gently fills the air. Leaning against the back of a tree, he smiles. When the sun has hidden, put down his drapes to close of day, his lover will come.

 

“Alexander.”

 

Beyond the thicket, he hears his whispered name, so faint that only the lips of a long-known friend could have uttered it. He stirs, watches the paper fall like dust onto the grassed ground, his ears captured by that single word; a lifetime of conversation held within its four syllables. The innocent hand in hand, more of a child than the most precocious cherub, cajoling and mischievous. Partners in crime. The steal in the dead of night, secretive and terse; the whispered words by candlelight and an on-going vow. _I love you,_ says the inevitable pull of time, and his heart is grateful for the reassurance.

 

The speaker remains unseen and yet, leaning back against the tree, splayed in glory, Alexander smiles in recognition. He knows that scent of distinct sawdust and fresh apples, the faint perfume he has sorely missed; he feels the soft two-step as his lover and the secret of the grove become one. A meeting place, too unknown to _be_ known, and a promise of a long-awaited talk.

 

“I thought you had forgotten,” Alexander chides, stretching out his legs carefully, knowing that his every move is being observed through the careful eyes of an equal. “Or else gotten lost,” and his face creases in clandestine fondness, a memory perhaps, long-since buried. His lashed eyes search each tree, the bright blue searching for the olive green.

 

Stubbornly unseen, his lover begins to laugh, and it is the sound of broken branches crunching beneath the weary footsteps of an army. “Lost? In the place of our childhood playground? Am I late?”

 

Alexander rests his head against the smooth tree bark, closes his eyes as the words smooth joy into his face. It has been too long since he has heard this voice. It has been months, and Alexander is too travel-weary to recall their last meeting. By his side, he unravels the paper, to read once more those slanted letters, uneven in the way that beloved words so oft are, and presses it to his lips.

 

“ _In sun kissed groves did our friendship once blossom,”_ Alexander repeats aloud, his voice layered with the once-again memory of receiving this letter. The excitement, blushing his cheeks, and the quickened rush of his heart. “ _Tonight may it be so again - when the sun’s closed his last eye, I shall meet you.”_ His eyes still closed - he sighs the sigh of completion.

 

“Did you think of me at all?” The whispered words circle him now, as his lover strolls absently side to side, no more fixed to this ground than Alexander’s heart to his chest.

 

“That is no more a question than to ask the moon if she missed the stars, or the honeybee his flowers.” Alexander’s eyes are widened now, anticipating the sigh of annoyance to cross his lover’s face, and he laughs to hear the short huff of breath. “Save your breath so that you may speak more to me. Come, let me see you, and I shall tell you everything.”

 

The footsteps are just as distant still, and the voice dipped in humour, fondness. A memory, of the rebuffed young boy in their days of childhood, reciting poetry and dramas too advanced for his reading. “Alexander, your tongue is still a lover of words. Simple tones for simple turns, I wish to hear the truth.”

 

“Well if you so wish then I must grant you that. It is true that I did miss you, think of you each day in fact, though I should go crazed with madness if you do not step out of those trees soon.” Alexander laughs shortly, to hear his lover’s answering sigh of disbelief, the closeness of a lifetime allowing him to picture that much-missed expression of incredulous adoration.

 

Adoration, which mingles into his lover’s harmonic voice to make his eyes awash with memories. “I have love for you, Alexander, much too much than is decent for an unpolished grove.”

 

“My tongue may favour words, but yours knows a riddle for everything,” Alexander’s fingers twine playfully in the trampled ferns. This game may continue all night, if he is lucky. “But I may tempt your company with the information that there are heated beds aplenty that have been prepared for my return.”

 

“By loveless slaves for their faceless master. They know nothing of what those beds have known - what toils I have witnessed each day.”

 

“Toils? I thought of home as love and welcome; not hurtful toils. What toils are these?”

 

Alexander’s words are met with silence, beyond which he can sense his concealed lover traversing back and forth among the sandy ground. At last, the silence ripples forth, and Alexander’s ears are saved. “Oh - you know of these toils, my Alexander, for they are loneliness and worry, sickness made of worry. Rumours, whispers, and seven months of silence.” Seven months, Alexander’s mind is far too shocked to believe it. Seven months, since the passage of last love, since the shocked goodbye and the pain of separation. His heart is angered to the point of desperation.

 

“Why can I see naught but your shadow? Where are your legs - oh such thighs to rival all the royalty I have known! - and those arms, so supple, so bent to the will of my own. Where are your lips that speak these words to me? Where’s your heart - that I have much missed and much longed to see again?” He cannot fight the laughter from his lips, yet the words’ meanings are true. With the burn of his lover’s eyes upon him, Alexander flexes his open fingers boyishly.

 

“My heart is where it is tired of being - waiting for you.”

 

“Well then it must wait no more. Step out of the trees, or must I seek you out?”

 

He grins handsomely to hear the rustle of leaves as the voice’s immaculate owner steps from between the farthest trees; grinning the familiar grin to Alexander, the vice and taste of childhood. Twenty years and more of memories tease in Alexander’s busied mind as he watches the bare feet press their way towards him. His heart, that aches despite the confident ploy upon his face, longs to be in control.

 

The lover, closer in body than the last seven months have allowed, clear as sight and scent, smiles the long-awaited smile of reunion, and idolatry, and fervency.

 

Alexander sits up, alert, in the sweet grass, and raises his tanned arms in welcome. He meets those olive eyes with equal intensity. On the ground, Alexander can hardly bear the wait of seconds, he inches towards the much-loved friend and confidant, breathing one sole word of admiration:

 

“Hephaistion.”


End file.
